Mistertwigg
asked on
host or DNS message delivery
hello,
hope this is enough points, bit broke being new
in exchange 5.5 i was having problems with some emails being bounced back (only about 3 addresses), yet these email addresses were recieving fine from anywhere else.
Now BT said make sure the internet mail service in exchange, under connections and message delivery, was set to forward all msgs to host, not DNS (use domain name system)
Any ideas why this worked, im pleased it did but would like to know why? as its 99% worked ok before
thanks for any replies
hope this is enough points, bit broke being new
in exchange 5.5 i was having problems with some emails being bounced back (only about 3 addresses), yet these email addresses were recieving fine from anywhere else.
Now BT said make sure the internet mail service in exchange, under connections and message delivery, was set to forward all msgs to host, not DNS (use domain name system)
Any ideas why this worked, im pleased it did but would like to know why? as its 99% worked ok before
thanks for any replies
The answer is in the question: ---> BT
Do you have a PTR record for your IP address? half my BT customers don't but if you relay through BT's smarthost (which has a PTR for itself but none of it's clients) then servers that check for the presence of a PTR record still accept mail from you. Thus the 1% of domains that won't accept mail from your address (which had no reverse DNS entry since BT supply you with a broken netblock) will accept it if you relay it through their relay as that has a properly registered netblock assigned to their mailserver.
The crazy thing is that as a home adsl user I get a PTR record assigned to my dynamic IP but BT's corporate/leased line businesses don't get the same record created even though it's a static address. Don't care what the record says for a hostanme but I'm getting pissed off that no in-addr.arpa record exists if you have the business bundle.
Do you have a PTR record for your IP address? half my BT customers don't but if you relay through BT's smarthost (which has a PTR for itself but none of it's clients) then servers that check for the presence of a PTR record still accept mail from you. Thus the 1% of domains that won't accept mail from your address (which had no reverse DNS entry since BT supply you with a broken netblock) will accept it if you relay it through their relay as that has a properly registered netblock assigned to their mailserver.
The crazy thing is that as a home adsl user I get a PTR record assigned to my dynamic IP but BT's corporate/leased line businesses don't get the same record created even though it's a static address. Don't care what the record says for a hostanme but I'm getting pissed off that no in-addr.arpa record exists if you have the business bundle.
ASKER
id love to say i knew about ptr records, but i dont so i looked up a definition.
"Pointer Record. Also called a reverse record. A PTR record associates an IP address with a canonical name. PTR records should point to a name that can be resolved back to the IP address. The name of the pointer record is not the IP address itself, but is the IP address’ four IP octets in reverse order followed by IN-ADDR.ARPA. for Example:"
I sort of understand what it does but have no idea how its implemented, where, or by who, is it by BT, do i request it.
Thanks for you reply.
Mr Twigg
"Pointer Record. Also called a reverse record. A PTR record associates an IP address with a canonical name. PTR records should point to a name that can be resolved back to the IP address. The name of the pointer record is not the IP address itself, but is the IP address’ four IP octets in reverse order followed by IN-ADDR.ARPA. for Example:"
I sort of understand what it does but have no idea how its implemented, where, or by who, is it by BT, do i request it.
Thanks for you reply.
Mr Twigg
ASKER
is it something implemented within my exchange server (5.5)
It's the ISP that has to impliment the record so in this case BT, to see if it is set run nslookup in a command prompt, lets pretend your mailserver is maila.microsoft.com. Note that NT's nslookup is user friendly and lets you enter the IP address instead of reversed-octets.in-addr.ar
nslookup
> maila.microsoft.com
Name: maila.microsoft.com
Addresses: 131.107.3.125, 131.107.3.124
> 131.107.3.125
Name: mail1.microsoft.com
Address: 131.107.3.125
> 131.107.3.124
Name: mail2.microsoft.com
Address: 131.107.3.124
So you see there is a PTR record for each of their mailservers so they will not get problems sending mail.
If you do the same for your IP addresses but get "can't find 77.66.55.44: Non-existent domain" then the PTR is not set up. If there is no record you might find that some FTP sites won't let you connect either or take a long time as well.
All you can do is complain but I've been waiting for a month for them to create PTRs for one of my customers, they sub out the creation of the forward zones to another company and expect them to be able to create the reverse records which the subcontractor probably can't do.
nslookup
> maila.microsoft.com
Name: maila.microsoft.com
Addresses: 131.107.3.125, 131.107.3.124
> 131.107.3.125
Name: mail1.microsoft.com
Address: 131.107.3.125
> 131.107.3.124
Name: mail2.microsoft.com
Address: 131.107.3.124
So you see there is a PTR record for each of their mailservers so they will not get problems sending mail.
If you do the same for your IP addresses but get "can't find 77.66.55.44: Non-existent domain" then the PTR is not set up. If there is no record you might find that some FTP sites won't let you connect either or take a long time as well.
All you can do is complain but I've been waiting for a month for them to create PTRs for one of my customers, they sub out the creation of the forward zones to another company and expect them to be able to create the reverse records which the subcontractor probably can't do.
ASKER
Well explained thanks.
So why not forward all msgs to host (as ive now just changed it) instead of a DNS lookup. Is there an advantage to using DNS instead of forwarding all to host then letting them reslove the addys.
So why not forward all msgs to host (as ive now just changed it) instead of a DNS lookup. Is there an advantage to using DNS instead of forwarding all to host then letting them reslove the addys.
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ASKER
thanks for the information, much appreciated
for example a mail to joe@somecompany.com
Exchange is looking up the MX records of somecompany.com and then sending the mail to the address returned from the MX records.
If you forward the message to a host, the host is doing the same, except in your case they do a better job 'cause it works. The only thing I can think of is that some addresses don't get correctly resolved. Can be a configuration error in your own DNS (if you have one).